In Retaliatory Move, Israel Clamps Down on a West Bank City

Striking back in the wake of a suicide bombing four days earlier, hundreds of Israeli troops backed by armor imposed a tight lockdown Friday on Jenin, the West Bank city from which Israel said the bombers came.

Soldiers and dozens of tanks rumbled into Jenin before dawn, residents and the army said, in what was described as the military’s largest incursion into the northern West Bank area in recent months. Palestinians said six people were hurt, three of them seriously.

The army said several Palestinian gunmen were wounded as they fired at approaching troops.

The drive into Jenin was triggered by Monday’s bombing of a bus in northern Israel in which 14 passengers were killed, the army said. Some of the bombing victims burned to death when the bus was consumed by flames within moments of being rammed by an explosives-laden SUV. Scores of people were injured.

Israel customarily responds militarily within hours to an attack of such magnitude. In this case, it apparently waited for the departure of an American envoy, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, who held talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials that ended Thursday. Israel has been under strong pressure to exercise restraint as the Bush administration gears up for a possible war in Iraq.

“As part of the war against terror ... infantry, armored and engineering forces entered the city of Jenin, which is considered to be a center of Palestinian terror infrastructure, and took positions in the city,” an Israeli army statement said.

Israeli authorities blamed a cell of the radical group Islamic Jihad for Monday’s bombing, which came only days after a tight military curfew in Jenin had been relaxed.

Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, called the Israeli incursion “a continuation of the crimes committed by troops and [Jewish] settlers against our people and our children.”

Arafat is being cold-shouldered by the U.S. and Israel, which consider him an architect of terrorist attacks against Israelis, and Burns did not meet with him during his visit.

Witnesses in Jenin said the Israelis seized dozens of homes as lookouts and sniper positions. Residents said the army appeared to have encountered some resistance in a downtown area known as Sahel, from which volleys of shots could be heard.

“I couldn’t even step outside my own door -- we were too frightened to move,” said 50-year-old resident Salem Mohammed Ghali, a father of seven who was briefly interviewed by telephone. He said that electricity had been cut and that loudspeaker announcements had ordered people to stay inside.

Tanks and armored military vehicles roared through the streets throughout the day, Ghali and other residents said.

Hospital officials said they hoped they had been able to tend to all of those injured.

“We have no idea what is going on in the city, as we cannot move about and people cannot get to us,” said Ziyad Abdel Nabi, the head of the city’s Al Razi hospital.

The refugee camp adjoining Jenin was the scene of heavy fighting in April when the Israeli army leveled a large swath of streets and homes in the camp’s center. A United Nations report later discounted Palestinian claims that a massacre had occurred there.

Jenin residents said Friday that they had stocked up on food and candles in anticipation of another Israeli drive into the city.

Jenin has long been a stronghold of Palestinian radical groups that send attackers to strike at targets inside Israel. Israel’s easing of its hold on Jenin last week came amid Bush administration criticism occasioned by the suffering in Palestinian areas caused by tight curfews and by a sharp increase in civilian casualties during Israeli army operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hours before the troops moved in, a boy was shot and killed after he clambered atop an Israeli tank. Palestinians said the boy, who was variously reported as being between 12 and 16 years of age, intended his act as a nonviolent expression of defiance, but Israel said the troops believed the boy intended to drop a bomb into the tank.